Hi, I wonder if anyone can help. I've tried searching in this site and on Google but have had no joy.

I'm trying to find the geographic number to which Virgin's 0844 054 4020 number diverts. This is the number for their internet dial up pay as you go service. I've asked Virgin but they declined to give this information.

My reason for wanting this is that our previous dial up provider (not Virgin) has recently hit us with a change of dial up number. This means we have to re-programme a large number of mobile devices, very costly for us. We could avoid the risk of this happening again by programming our devices with our own 0845 number and diverting this to Virgin's landline number, if we knew it!

The other route is to divert our own 0845 number to Virgin's 0844, but this costs 8ppm plus cost of the 0845 call = too expensive!

Appreciate any help or tips.

thanks

Mark

~ Thread title edited by Dave

Revenue-sharing numbers are used to pay for dial-up internet services. This is a semi-legitimate use of the numbers. Therefore, finding geographical numbers for these is not a priority on this forum - this has been discussed many times before.

The number you quote costs 4/2/1p (day/eve/weekend). This is more expensive than an 0845 number (3/1/1p, soon to be 3/1/0.5p) Therefore I suggest you ditch Virgin and use a provider with an 0845 number. 123-reg have the number 0845 0798313. You don't need to sign up, just use any username and password. However, I can't guarantee they'll never change it, as they changed the number a while back. See: http://www.123-reg.co.uk/dialup/

Better still, you can try their 0845 4550280 which I can assure you still works OK.  ;)
I use it every month to retain my PAYG account.

Thanks for your help. I agree that PAYG dial up is a legit use of the 0845 system as it thereby funds the service. I don't mind paying the ISP to use the service, I just don't want to be reliant on dialling their 08 number.

If I could find a way of repaying the ISP without using their 08 number it would be great.

To get round this problem we're probably going to end up installing our own lines / hardware and bypass the ISPs altogether...maybe a sledghammer to crack a nut but its not funny for us when ISPs change their 08 number!

Mark

Why do you want 0845 dialup internet access?

If you're talking about installing you own lines etc, then that doesn't sound like the light internet user who spends about 30 mins a week just to check e-mails.

If you're spending a bit of time on the net, then perhaps why not switch to a supplier that charges a monthly fee, and gives you an 0800 or 0808 number for dialup.  There are suppliers who cater for a very light useage for a lower monthly fee, which still is cheaper than 0845 access

Broadband costs about the same as the more expensive dialup companies, so if you live in a broadband area, then why not give that a go.

The application involves a large number of identical mobile devices all posting data to a website using a dial up internet connection, from different parts of the UK, down a standard BT phoneline. They all use the same dial up account so they can all have exactly the same embedded software. The device user (our customer) pays for the call and this needs to be revenue neutral for us - hence using the 0845 number. Broadband is not needed or cost effective as the devices only go online for about 3 mins per day each.

The main issue is the possibility that ISPs can unilaterally change the dial up number and this causes us a headache.

cheers